Fantastic 1 bed Apt with heated pool/sauna/hot-tub/gym

We are saddened and very sorry to hear that you didn’t seem to enjoy your time in our apartment, JoAnn. What has however surprised us about your review, is that we have been renting apartments in Estrela da Luz for nearly 10 years and have never received such a bad review, where the guest had literally nothing good to say about their visit. We are completely open to constructive criticism, as there are always ways that we can improve the apartments and the service that we offer, but given your purely negative remarks, we just don’t know what we could have done to please you. Anyway, we have replied below to the 3 complaints that you listed in your review: You said that the bed is really hard. Over the years we’ve found that beds are the one thing that it can be near impossible to please everyone!! We took the advice of a local company that supplies beds to hotels in the area and went with good quality medium firmness mattresses. A lot of our guests comment on how comfortable the beds are, but we do have the odd guest who tell us that they would prefer softer mattresses and have even had some people say that they would prefer harder ones! You may remember that when I sent over all of the information about the apartment (check in details/facilities in Estrela/things to do in the area etc) I said to you please let us know if you have any queries or we can help in any way at all. We only wish that you had mentioned the bed to us then, as we could have tried to find a solution for you. We frequently install additional full size single beds (which can be made into a king size double) in the lounge, when we accommodate 3 or 4 people in the apartment, as shown on one of the photographs on the listing. We purposely chose softer mattresses for these extra beds, as they are frequently used by children and if we had known that you felt that the bed was too firm, we would have happily changed the bedroom mattresses over to these ones or provided mattress toppers, which can again increase the softness. I should also point out that we have many repeat guests, who come back year after year (sometimes multiple times each year) and many of these guests stay for 2-4 months over the winter season. One of the reasons these people state for coming back again and again is because of the comfort of the bed and the fact that it is a king size. In saying that, one thing that we have taken from your message, is that the responsibility rests on us to make people aware that we can provide different mattress options and we have now added this information to the material we send out to guests prior to their arrival, so thank you for that. You said that the couches had an odour to them. We really didn’t understand this comment at all and have never previously heard anyone mention this. We purposely took a few days to respond to your review, as Helene and I wanted to go into the apartment to check the sofas ourselves, as we were worried that we’d missed something. We just couldn’t smell anything at all and found them completely neutral. They are both leather, but are over 10 years old and now don’t even smell of leather. The comfort of our guests is extremely important and we would definitely act on your comment, if we felt it had any validity. You mentioned that ‘the bathroom is quirky, super narrow between toilet and counter’. This again completely threw us, as we’ve never previously had a negative comment about the bathroom. The bathroom is certainly not huge, but it is definitely not ‘super narrow’ and we feel it is perfectly normal for a 1-bedroom apartment. We frequently receive feedback and reviews from guests stating how large and spacious they found the apartment. The internal size of the apartment is 88 square Metres / 950 square feet and this doesn’t include the 2 large balconies. You also mentioned ‘The counter goes right to the tub/shower, and you have to manoeuver between the counter, toilet and a shower door to step in the tub/shower. I can't imagine older individuals would feel comfortable using the shower’. We were so concerned about this remark that we ran it passed an elderly couple who’ve visited a number of times over the last few years, and they told us that they had no problem with the bathroom and actually remembered how easy it was to have a shower as they could lean on the marble sink top, whilst climbing into the bath. The vast majority of our guests who return each year and normally book for long period over the winter season are elderly (some in the 80’s and the odd one in their 90’s) and again no one has ever complained about the bathroom. The shower door even opens into the bath area, thus providing more space to enter. Since your review, we’ve posted another photograph of the bathroom area, to show how much space there is in the room. We genuinely want all of our guests to enjoy staying in our apartments in Estrela and we just don’t know why your review was so negative compared to all of the others we’ve received, especially since you had absolutely nothing positive to say. We don’t of course know your motives, but can’t help wondering if it possibly had something to do with us not being able to agree to your request for a late check-out (3 hours later than the usual time, during the peak summer season!!), At the time we said that this just wasn’t possible because we had guests arriving that afternoon and that Estrela housekeeping, whom we use to clean and prepare our apartments, dictate the check-in / check-out times to us. We also pointed out that you were very welcome to use the Estrela facilities for as long as you wanted that day, including the indoor area, gym and showers. Anyway, we really can’t add anything else but want to thank you again for the booking. Kind regards, Michael & Helene